Oversight
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Oneshot 'missing moment' from S7's "No Such Thing as Bad Luck". An honest discussion between Casey and Severide after Kelly reprimands Cruz.


Oversight

Casey stood beside the wall in the hallway at 51 and waited. He'd heard Severide talking to Cruz, and he heard the Squad lieutenant's footsteps heading his way. A few seconds later he saw Severide coming his way, and he walked past Casey without even seeming to acknowledge the captain's existence.

"Severide."

"Hm?" he turned his head, "Oh, sorry, Casey."

Casey moved away from the wall and followed beside Kelly and asked him, "You got a minute?"

"Uh, not really."

"Well _make_ one."

The way he said it had Kelly's eyes widening in surprise. He turned and looked at the Truck captain, "What's up?"

Casey pointed to his quarters. "Let's talk in here."

"Why?"

"Just do it," Casey said as he opened the door.

Kelly didn't get it but he went inside, Casey followed, shut the door behind him, and Kelly's eyebrows raised in curiosity when he saw Casey pulling the blinds down.

"I thought that's what everyone _else_ did when they came in here to hide," he noted. "What's going on, Casey?"

Casey turned from the windows and asked him, "Do you remember that call a couple shifts back, the woman who had her hands frozen to the pipe?"

"Like I could forget," Kelly said.

"Bit of a mess," Casey said.

"That's an understatement," Kelly replied.

Casey nodded, "Would've gone a lot smoother if Cruz had been here that shift."

"Yeah, it would've if Voight and Grissom hadn't needed him to go undercover and somebody wasn't stealing the lockbox keys, what's your point?" Kelly asked.

"Nothing, it's just...I remember you called out for Cruz on that one."

Kelly nodded, not really getting where the conversation was going. "Habit, he's always here."

"I know," Casey nodded in response. "And it just went from one thing to another, the battery dead in the Sawzall."

Kelly nodded.

"That's the kind of stuff you just kick yourself about because it's completely preventable," Casey said. "Little oversights like that just throw everything off."

"I agree, but what's the point?" Kelly asked.

Casey looked at him and asked, "Do you remember what you said?"

Kelly's eyes looked one way and the other and he slowly nodded, "Yeah, I said Cruz would've checked that first thing that morning."

"But he couldn't because he was at 66," Casey said. "And you said what happened on that call _couldn't_ happen again."

Kelly shrugged. "Yeah?"

Casey paused to see if the pieces fell together for Kelly, and when they didn't, he said what was sitting heavily on his mind.

"Kelly...you knew for _three days_ that Cruz wasn't going to be on that shift...why didn't you have one of the other guys check the battery first thing? Why didn't you tell Tony or Capp to check it?"

"Why should I?" Kelly asked, "I never had to _tell_ Cruz to check it, he just did it."

Casey nodded, "And he wasn't there. And what would've happened if there _hadn't_ been a spectator at the curb with a mug of coffee to thaw the metal? That was dumb luck, Kelly, if it wasn't for that there could've been a lot more trouble on that call."

The look on Kelly's face told Casey everything he needed to know, he hadn't thought about the events of that day _at all_ since it happened.

"Look, Kelly, I'm not saying Cruz wasn't wrong for disobeying your order on the last call, but you've been pretty short-sighted yourself lately."

The new expression forming on Kelly's face made it clear that he wasn't liking the direction this conversation was taking.

"I'm not trying to...what would you call it? Lord my 'captain-ness' over you," Casey said, "but if one of the guys in my company is going to be absent, I make sure everybody else knows what the slack is to pick up, I don't leave it to chance, I don't just assume that they'll figure it out for themselves, I'm in charge so it's my responsibility. You're the lieutenant on Squad, you're in charge, they're your men, they answer to you, they do what you say...you knew we'd be a man short, you should've reassigned Cruz's responsibilities to the others."

"You're telling me how-"

"Kelly, would you _shut up_ and listen?" Casey all but barked at him. And something in the way he said it commanded Kelly's full attention.

"The fact that you didn't even realize you didn't _have_ to tell Cruz to do it, and you didn't even think about it when he was absent, says he's a little more on the ball around here than you're willing to give him credit for," Casey told him.

Kelly didn't say anything in response, and the expression on his face didn't really change, but the look in his eyes did. It was a look that was rarely seen, but Casey could recognize it. It was the look of Kelly Severide being humbled.

Casey came down a notch. "A couple years back I saw this show on TV about the FBI, talked about how when they do security details at large public events and have to watch for any suspicious behavior that could be terrorists, no matter how many agents they have scattered around the crowd, no matter how many different angles they all cover, _nobody_ takes for granted that anybody else sees or hears something that they did, even if the odds are good somebody else knows about it, _everybody_ reports in what they know so there's no misunderstanding on what's going on. Now...that might seem a little repetitive, especially for us because we've been doing this forever...but when lives hang in the balance of us being able to do our jobs and being in full communication with one another, we can't really afford to take that chance, can we? There's not any room for 'habit', is there?"

Kelly's only response at first was a defeated sigh. Then, "Okay...okay...point taken."

"You know, in spite of what was going on at the time with Rice dividing the companies, it meant a lot to Cruz to make Rescue Squad," Casey told him. "I know he looks up to you, but I think you could stand to learn a few things from him too."

Kelly pursed his lips together for a minute and responded, "I think I have."

Casey nodded firmly. "Good. Let's get back to work."

Kelly left the office first, Casey followed a few seconds later and pulled the door shut behind him. Through the corner of his eye he caught sight of something, turned and saw Otis pressed flat against the wall, and he glanced over at Casey with a small, knowing smirk.

"Nice work, Captain."

Casey offered a small smile in response and said, "Cruz may be Squad but he's still one of _mine_, and I'll still go to the mat for him."


End file.
